Berthelot gets set to say goodbye

• By JOHN A. COLVIN
• Advocate River parishes bureau
• Published: Dec 1, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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GONZALES — Mayor Johnny Berthelot offered a good explanation for starting last week’s City Council meeting with a plastic ruler.

“I packed up my gavel already,” he told the council members and others in attendance.

Afterward, Berthelot went home and told his wife that they had to find the gavel. “I can’t use a ruler for my last meeting,” he said.

Berthelot is proud that in more than 32 years in public office in Gonzales, he has never missed a meeting.

“I came twice with neck braces after surgery, and I came some times when I should not have,” he said.

A 1969 graduate of East Ascension High School and a former barbershop owner, Berthelot served eight years as a city councilman and 24 years as mayor.

He recently reflected on the city’s past, its present and what he envisions as its future as well as Ascension Parish’s future.

During his tenure, Berthelot served as president of the Louisiana Municipal Association from 1989 to 1990, among other leadership roles with the group.

He also served as board of directors’ chairman for the Southern Municipal Conference, a regional organization of state municipal groups in the southeastern United States.

Among his achievements, Berthelot said he is most proud of creating a full-time Fire Department after voters approved a half-cent sales tax in 2001.

“We had exhausted our possibilities with a volunteer fire department,” said Berthelot, a former volunteer firefighter. “The city had grown beyond that. The creation of a paid fire department will have a lasting impact.”

The same tax used to start a professional fire department also allowed the city to offer free garbage pickup and to put every police officer in a car.

The 2001 sales tax was the second sales tax initiative approved under Berthelot’s administration. The first was in 1989 and the revenues from bonds on that half-cent sales tax funded a 20-year capital improvement plan on the city’s sewer system.